Why is God in the Old Testament so different from God in the New Testament?

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Why is God so different in the New Testament opposed to the Old? How can that be? How can the same God (in numerous occasions) request/demand to kill an entire tribe, specifically mentioning all the innocent women and children and even their livestock to be killed as well, while Christ says Love your neighbor and enemy. Did God the Father forget something? Did Christ? Why would God request to have Saul kill all the innocent along with the army in 1Samuel and have other annointed do so on other occasions? Is God’s Way right some of the time and then wrong at others? How could the New Testament erase the Old if God is never wrong? Is God trying to tell us that killing the innocent in war is an acceptable practice? Somebody explain to me how Christ is right and the Father is wrong. How could God the Father ever be wrong? Isn’t God the Father Truth itself? Isn’t Truth eternal? If Truth is eternal and God the Father justifies the killing of the innocent in war, why does that same Truth not apply anymore to our Christian standards? How could God the Father and Son be opposed to each other in this respect?
 
God is unchanging. So, He is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow. What is different, is our spiritual maturity and our knowledge of Him.
 
In the OT, God teaches us numerous lessons that we are prepared to apply to the New Covenant Church.

First of all, look at things from a heavenly point of view. If God used the death of these people to teach others about Him, do you think He had a heavenly reward for these people who were used simply as his pawns.
 
So why does God kill them. These tribes are pagan worhsippers. God is showing the Israelites that if you mix with pagan worshippers, you will learn to love other gods beside him. The Israelites proved this time and time again when they disobeyed God and allowed these tribes to live. Sure enough, they’d mix customs and drift away from God in favor of other gods.
 
God does not kill the innocent in the OT. You need to reread it more closely. When people are killed, it is due to their own evil actions, or because they are trying to kill God’s chosen people.

Genesis 18
23 And drawing nigh he said: Wilt thou destroy the just with the wicked? 24 If there be fifty just men in the city, shall they perish withal? and wilt thou not spare that place for the sake of the fifty just, if they be therein? 25 Far be it from thee to do this thing, and to slay the just with the wicked, and for the just to be in like case as the wicked, this is not beseeming thee: thou who judgest all the earth, wilt not make this judgment.26 And the Lord said to him: If I find in Sodom fifty just within the city, I will spare the whole place for their sake.
 
Joel_Tunnah said:
God does not kill the innocent in the OT. You need to reread it more closely. When people are killed, it is due to their own evil actions, or because they are trying to kill God’s chosen people.
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One can reason that when God tells Israel to kill everyone including the infants, that these infants are probably innocent to some degree.
 
Lou_F said:
Why is God so different in the New Testament opposed to the Old? How can that be? How can the same God (in numerous occasions) request/demand to kill an entire tribe, specifically mentioning all the innocent women and children and even their livestock to be killed as well, while Christ says Love your neighbor and enemy. Did God the Father forget something? Did Christ? Why would God request to have Saul kill all the innocent along with the army in 1Samuel and have other annointed do so on other occasions? Is God’s Way right some of the time and then wrong at others? How could the New Testament erase the Old if God is never wrong? Is God trying to tell us that killing the innocent in war is an acceptable practice? Somebody explain to me how Christ is right and the Father is wrong. How could God the Father ever be wrong? Isn’t God the Father Truth itself? Isn’t Truth eternal? If Truth is eternal and God the Father justifies the killing of the innocent in war, why does that same Truth not apply anymore to our Christian standards? How could God the Father and Son be opposed to each other in this respect?
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The difference between the OT and the NT is the fulfillment of the OT in Christ. In the OT God’s main concern was to keep Israel pure of paganism. It was vital to keep Israel free of paganism so that it would produce the Messiah, the Savior of the World.

War was a way of life between peoples and nations in which taking no prisoners was the norm up until the time when Christianity became the dominant religion of the Western world.

What Jesus came to do was to reveal the love of the Father–to do the will of the Father. You will note that the will of the Father was for Christ to die, and to die at the hands of not only pagans but his own, as well. Christ is the bridge between the OT and the NT, of the pagan and the righteous Jew. We now live in the age of grace not of the Law.
 
So why do we not just focus on the NT? Why do we need the OT? To gain a respect for the NT?
 
God is not so different. In the New Testament, as an example to others, Ananias and Sapphira were struck dead because they lied to Peter. (Acts 5:1-11) Likewise, many Corinthian Christians became sick and some died because they received the Eucharist unworthily. (1 Corinthians 11:27-32)

In the Old Testament, God used various means to punish the wicked, including the Flood, fire from heaven (Sodom and Gomorrah), and the army of Israel. That the innocent died along with the wicked by these means should not upset us. In these cases, the death of the innocent should not be looked upon as an unjust punishment but as an act of mercy, whereby God removes the innocent out of the midst of wickedness lest wickedness pervert them and gathers them to himself. On early death see Wisdom 4:7-19.
 
Sina said:
So why do we not just focus on the NT? Why do we need the OT? To gain a respect for the NT?
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Think of Israel as a person. If Israel is a person, than Israel would have been a child that God was raising in the OT. He had to teach them, to let them grow up, making their own mistakes and (sometimes) learning from those mistakes.

Now, the New Israel (the Church) is that same person, just as an adult. And an adult has to remember the lessons they learned as a child and apply them to their personal lives, right?

Just as we need to take the lessons that God showed us in the OT and apply them to our lives.

For instance:Israel broke the Covenant and thus God allowed them to go into Exile where they were separated from God.

What happens to us when we sin? We are separated from God.

The book of Judges tells us of the repeated cycles of sin and repentance. When Israel falls into sin, they were overrun by other countries. Just as when we fall into sin, we are overrun by sin. Then Israel would repent and call on the Lord, and He would save them. Sound familiar?
 
Sina said:
So why do we not just focus on the NT? Why do we need the OT? To gain a respect for the NT?
Click to expand...
Because Paul said, all of Scripture is “All scripture, inspired of God, is profitable to teach, to reprove, to correct, to instruct in justice, 17 That the man of God may be perfect, furnished to every good work.” 2 Tim 3:16-17

The Apostles used them since at the time it was written the NT was not put together like we see it today.

Rejecting the OT is a ancient heresy condemned by the Church.

The heresy is:

Marcionism is the dualist belief system that originates in the teachings of Marcion of Sinope at Rome around the year 144.[1] Marcion affirmed Jesus Christ as the savior sent by God and Paul as his chief apostle, but he rejected the Hebrew Bible and Yahweh.

Marcionism was denounced by its opponents as heresy, and written against, notably by Tertullian, in a five-book treatise Adversus Marcionem, written about 208. However, the strictures against Marcionism predate the authority, claimed by the First Council of Nicaea in 325, to declare what is heretical against the Church. Marcion’s writings are lost, though they were widely read and numerous manuscripts must have existed. Even so, many scholars (including Henry Wace) claim it is possible to reconstruct and deduce a large part of ancient Marcionism through what later critics, especially Tertullian, said concerning Marcion.

Source:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcionism
 
People forget that God is perfectly holy, perfectly just, and Will punish evil-doers. Those who seem to have an easy life on Earth are probably the ones who are “sold out” to the devil and so the devil isn’t messing with them anymore… But if a person escapes “punishment” (justice) in this life - and even manages to live very well (wealth, etc…) - he/she will not escape justice in the next. Even so, i don’t think all evil-doers ALWAYS escape punishment in this life… It just seems like they do…
Anyway… People in this comfortable U.S. society have lost a belief in the wrath of God…
Even when a person does repent, he/ she faces the “wrath of God”, i.e. the purification process that comes after repentence… Also, the worldly system (run by Satan) “punishes” Christians, thereby making it harder to stay committed to Christ, easier for the Christian to be slothful, worldly… and renounce Christ, intentionally or o therwise…
Long story Short: Life is hard… and then you die… 😦
 
In the OT, we here God talking about how he will create a new law, not on stone, but written on our own hearts (cf. Jeremiah). He will be our shepherd. He will restore his people, knit new flesh onto dry bones. We will be his people, and he will be our God (cf. Ezekiel). A bruised reed he will not break, a smoldering wick he will not quench (cf. Isaiah). His rod and staff comfort me; I will live in the house of the Lord for all my days (cf. Psalms). He sets before us a choice between life or death, blessing or curse - choose life! (cf. Deuteronomy).

And in the NT, we hear from Jesus about how evildoers will be cast into the lake of fire. Jesus has not come to bring peace, but to set father against son, brother against brother, mother in law against daughter in law. If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. If your eye causes you to sin, gouge it out. Better to live with one hand and one eye than to be cast body and soul into Gehenna where the fire never stops and the worm never dies.

So I think basically, you have to read both the OT and the NT more carefully before you say the God of the OT is mean and cruel, and then suddenly all nice and happy and loving in the NT. God is God. The love that we all think of as “New Testament” is there in the OT as well, and the consequences for evildoing that we think are so awful in the OT are certainly present in the New Testament as well.
 
Bobby Jim, good point. I recall hearing that Jesus Christ speaks more about the fires of hell then He does the coming of the Kingdom. But I don’t have the statistics.
 
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